Messer Chups

Surf n Roll

We are still reeling from the killer time we had during our Halloween Howling Tour of North America. It was a total pleasure to play for our fans in the US and Mexico, see many beautiful cities, and share good times (and a drink or two) with you, our friends. We'd like to thank all who came out to the shows and for your support, and big thanks also to The Boss Martians and Black Flamingos who toured the U.S. with us. We're planning big things for 2018 -- including the vinyl LP release of our new album 'Taste The Blood of Guitaracula' (MuSick Recordings); possible new tour dates in Europe, The U.S., Canada, South America, Australia and Japan; as well as other surprises! So stay tuned, friends. Cheers!

MESSER CHUPS

In their music Messer Chups combine surf, beats, film samples, scratchy historical recordings, loungey and cartoon sounds from the 50′s and 60′s.The show is combined with video from trash cult movies of the middle of the last century – Betty Page, Bela Lugosi , zombies, Russ Meyer’s and Ed Wood’s heroes all mixed in videocollages of the master Gitarkin. Messer Chups is the project of Russian composer Oleg Gitarkin, and while the band’s instrumental rock is hard to neatly categorize, it’s safe to say that it would be enjoyed by fans of rockabilly, horror punk, scratchy surf records, Italian slasher films, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, pulp fiction, lounge music, Ed Wood, the theremin, the Cramps, Russ Meyer movies and the theme song from “The Addams Family.” Gitarkin incorporates all of these elements and more, layering samples from Russian B-movies over weird vintage keyboard chirps and groovy horn loops.

Messer Chups have already released over a half dozen albums and a greatest hits collection, which is a little extreme unless you’re a diehard fan of this kind of stuff. The trashy sci-fi horror sound of Messer Chups is not very common within the context of Russian rock music. The reason for this is the good old cold-war/iron curtain commie agenda. The majority of Messer Chups’ musical and visual aesthetics come from trashy western pop-culture of the past century. This includes horror/sci-fi b-movies from 1930′s through 1970′s, as well as music such as surf (The Ventures, Dick Dale, Trashmen), big-band lounge (Henry Mancini, Les Baxter, Martin Denny) and rock n’ roll of the 60′s.Since the Ipecac release, Messer Chups has slowly developed a cult following around the world as one of the most unique and genre-defiant bands.
Gitarkin formed Messer Chups in 1998 during an extended stay in Hamburg. The original lineup was Gitarkin on bass and Annette Schneider, a German music promoter, on synths. Though amicable enough, this lineup did not work as Gitarkin and Schneider lived in different countries, leading to hellish logistics. In 1999, Gitarkin returned to St. Petersburg and found a keyboard player in Igor Vdovin, former vocalist for the band Leningrad. They toured as a duo in Russia and the United States in 2000-02. In 2003 a world-famous theremin player Lydia Kavina joined the band. She is the grandniece of Leon Theremin, the Russian inventor of the theremin, an instrument whose ghostly waw was a fixture in horror movies of the 1940s and ’50s. Oleg and Lydia released together CD’s – Black Black Magic , Vamp Babes Upgrade Version. Lydia participated on few tracks of most famous through licensed to Mike Patton’s IPECAC Recordings album “Crazy Price”.
Zombie Girl came to the band in 2004.The founder of the project Oleg Gitarkin, is one of the most talented modern Russian composers, who became famous with his another project MESSER FUR FRAU MULLER in Russia and abroad. He is also making music for movies, theater and adverts.